"Ecclesia semper reformanda" is a Latin phrase that means "church always reforming." It describes the need for the church in every generation to be renewed by God in order to join him in his mission in the world.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

When Ellen
Modin gathered with forty teachers and seven preachers in Salt Lake City at the
Congregational Church on April 2, 1885, a reporter from The Salt Lake Herald referred to her as “Miss Modin, the Swedish
lady missionary”—a title descriptive of her whole life. After serving in Utah,
she returned to Minneapolis where she founded a school for female evangelists
and a rescue shelter for women and children.She lived a missional life.

In Evangelical Free
Church history, Ellen Modin was the first
missionary associated with its earliest work which in 1885 was called Kristnas gemensamma verksamhet, the United
Work of Christians. She was not only the
first to receive support from the mission account but was the first approvedmissionary on the field.She arrived to Salt Lake City several months ahead
of Edward Thorell, the second Free-work missionary to Utah.She originally associated with American
Congregationalists “working among Swedish women who had adopted Mormon teachings
and practiced the religion of polygamy.”The Report of the American Home
Missionary Society stated: “In Salt Lake City, Miss Modin has been visiting
from house to house, ministering to the sick and gathering the Scandinavians
for study of the Bible and prayer.” In
addition, she worked among Chinese immigrants. Several Chinese embraced the
Christian faith and two became employed as missionaries.

Ellen
Modin (1853–1941) originally from Hälsingland, Sweden, had lost both of her
parents to death before she immigrated to America in 1881. She arrived first to
Des Moines, Iowa, and then relocated to Minneapolis. She came to America as a teacher, having
completed her course of study at Bollnäs Seminarium in Gävleborg.

The
Utah Mission was taken over by the Free’s United Work of Christians as a result
of Fredrik Franson’s visit to the Utah Territory in 1879 and 1880. In company with F. J. Fredrickson, Franson
spent six months working as an itinerant evangelist in the Mormon territory. His vivid descriptions of the conditions were reported
in the periodical Chicago-Bladet,
stirring readers to pray for and support this mission.

Such
reports prompted Ellen Modin to join the mission to Swedish Mormon women, and
so she arrived in February 1885 to begin her work. Three years later she was joined by Lottie
Axelson and Mathilda Johnson.In Modin’s
first book, titled
Eko från flydda dagar (Echoes from Days Gone By) published in 1906, she
gave an account of her activities among Mormons, writing: “I made it a practice to spend every morning
studying books of Mormonism, comparing their teachings with the Bible.”She spent her afternoons visiting Swedish
Mormon women with a view to persuading them to evangelical faith.

In 1891, Modin left Utah, returning to
Minnesota where she founded Kvinnornas
Allians Missionshem, the Women’s Alliance Mission Home, in St. Paul. This was a period of time when female
evangelists were active in the Free Mission, especially in Minnesota. Women
ministers were encouraged by Fredrik Franson of the newly founded Scandinavian
Alliance Mission—later known as TEAM—and August Davis of the newly founded
Scandinavian Mission Society of Minnesota—the first Minnesota district of the
Free Mission.Modin was active with the Scandinavian
Mission Society and took it upon herself to travel throughout the country raising
funds for her school where she would serve as instructor. The Women’s Alliance Mission Home offered
Bible training courses exclusively for female workers, at a time when some churches
called only women to conduct revival and mission meetings, and at least one, called
women to serve as pastors.

In 1897, the building
of the Mission Home in St. Paul was sold and Ellen Modin arranged for the purchase
of a property in Minneapolis. She continued as president of the Scandinavian Women’s
Alliance Mission Home “until the brethren no longer encouraged the
mission.”Consequently, in 1907 it was
discontinued. Modin sold the property
and transferred the assets to the newly founded Skandinaviska Skyddshemmet, Scandinavian Home of Shelter—a ministry
for “fallen women.” This home provided
refuge for women and children, particularly for Swedish girls who were pregnant
out of wedlock. It was a place for them to stay during their pregnancy and birth
of the child.

The home then arranged for children to be adopted. Modin adopted
a son herself, namely, Roy N. Modin, “a poor boy” who went on to become a
trombonist in the Fort Snelling Army Band.During her years in Minnesota, Ellen was an active member of the
Scandinavian Free Mission Church, known later as First Evangelical Free Church
in Minneapolis.

From
1909 to 1932, Ellen used her talent in writing to publish a monthly periodical
titled Räddningslinan,
The Life Line—the official organ of the Scandinavian Home of Shelter. The
organization’s name was later changed to the Scandinavian Rescue Mission. Over the years, Ellen was assisted by editors
such as Rosine Widfeldt, Josephine Princell, and Hannah E. Johnson.Modin’s publication of the monthly
periodical, as well as her three books and several poems, earned her a place
among George M. Stephenson’s seventeen noted Swedish-American female authors. In the 1920s she published the work about her
life and ministry titled Det gjorde Gud
(God Did It) that contains accounts about
“God’s wonderful leading and his glorious answers to prayer in ministry.” In 1930, she published Varifrån och varthän? (Wherefrom
and Wither), a book of her reflections on “living on earth’s streets in
light of God’s Word.”

Ellen Modin, the Swedish lady
missionary, was not faint in heart. She was an activist with the Southside
Citizen’s Committee that worked to close down Minneapolis’s “red light
district.”She was known as a feisty
woman with a passion to take the gospel in word and deed to others, whether to
Swedish women in Salt Lake City or to distressed women and children in
Minneapolis.In our day when many speak
of “missional living” and what it means “to engage in one’s context with word
and deed,” Ellen Modin is an example of a Swedish lady who lived a missional
life.

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About Me

Dr. Gustafson serves as Associate Professor of Evangelism and Missional Ministry and Chair of the Mission and Evangelism Department at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He is a graduate of Linköpings Universitet in Sweden (Ph.D.), Fuller Theological Seminary (D.Min.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.Div., Th.M.), and Western Illinois University (B.B.).